Now that you're thoroughly intimidated (or maybe totally
pumped about the chance to really show your stuff—it's cool, let the fist pumps
roll), let's talk about your audience further. Have you ever wondered who actually
reads your application essay? They drink sherry, read Derrida on
their lunch breaks, and gleefully thrown your essay out the window if you use
"who" instead of "whom," right? Not quite.

They come dressed to universities wearing ties and dresses
and appear in human form. But they aren’t. They did something very bad in a
former life and karma is punishing them by having to read 9,500 bad essays to
find the 500 decent ones and the 3 dozen awesome ones that then become part of
their Pantheon?

Sorry.

The key fact to know about your audience (and yes, you are
writing for a specific audience and it doesn’t include Grandma) is that they
are bored. Tired. Jaded.

Think of all your friends applying to the same school who
will spend an hour on their essay with trite blurbs about how good it felt to
help the needy. These people must read them, every word. Bring the pain.

Who are these admissions gnomes? Imagine that:

You are locked in your office from approximately November to March every year.

You read applications day and night, and we're not exaggerating.

You work your booty off trying to find the students that will be a good fit for your school, and vice versa.

You respect every applicant, and you know how much time it takes to put an application together.

You've read hundreds and hundreds of applications this year alone. They really start to blend together.

Now, imagine that you're that same admission officer and
that you've come across one really rad college essay. It's like the smell of
fresh-baked cookies, making you sit up in your chair and smile (and reach for
milk). The applicant took the time to make sure there were no spelling
mistakes. The applicant really thought about what she wanted to say. She wrote
from the heart and conveyed a sense of personality. She told a compelling
story.

Bliss. You'd want to put this application in your
"favorites" pile.

Write for that pile. Get the gnomes excited. Or, at the very
least, don’t put them to sleep.

Okay, so you get the idea, right? Admissions readers have a
pretty tough (and potentially boring) job.